During the 1960s the field of psychology focussed on the science of how past trauma creates present symptoms, and how to reduce people’s misery. Professor Martin Seligman wanted to change that focus. He’s become known as the Father of Positive Psychology, and he’s had a profound influence worldwide. In Part 1 of our 2 programs with Martin Seligman, hear him address an exclusive audience in Australia on happiness and human flourishing.
A Simple Daily Practice that Works Being present in the minute is a simple day-to-day method that we can do anytime and anywhere. Do the stepping-back technique if it aids. Become conscious of our real nature as understanding itself, the active presence in which all noises, views, experiences, thoughts, and “stories”– even the most individual…
During meditation, we should not develop a mind which accumulates and holds on to things, but instead we develop a mind which is willing to let go of things, to let go of burdens. Outside of meditation we have to carry the burden of our many duties, like so many heavy suitcases, but within the period of meditation so much baggage is unnecessary. So, in meditation see how much baggage you can unload. Think of these things as burdens, heavy weights pressing upon you. I like to begin at the very simple stage of giving up the baggage of past and future.
Abandoning the past means not even thinking about your work, your family, your commitments, your responsibilities, your history, the good or bad times you had as a child…, you abandon all past experiences by showing no interest in them at all. As for the future, the anticipations, fears, plans, and expectations let all of that go too. This future is known to the wise as uncertain, unknown and so unpredictable. It is often complete stupidity to anticipate the future, and always a great waste of your time to think of the future in meditation.
When you have abandoned all past and all future, it is as if you have come alive. You are here, you are mindful. This is the first stage of the meditation, just this mindfulness sustained only in the present.
Ajahn Brahm, Sustained Attention on the Present Moment
http://www.inc.com/empact/bill-gates-warren-buffett-and-oprah-all-use-the-5-hour-rule.html
The author of this article states “Many of these leaders, despite being extremely busy, set aside at least an hour a day (or five hours a week) over their entire career for activities that could be classified as deliberate practice or learning.”
Is this what you do? She goes on to reflect that this “learning” can be subdivided into:-
(1) Read
(2) Reflect
(3) ExperimentDo you think this is useful?
photo by Claudio Toledo on Flickr
“The Four Agreements” instructs that, at the root of everything, self-limiting ideas burglarize us of pleasure and create needless suffering. A Look At Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements By Leigh Burton At our ideal we humans aim to serve others, be there for loved ones and make a lot of…
As part of the “Real Love with Sharon Salzberg” event hosted by Women of Wisdom and Mindful, meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg discussed the true meaning of love for ourselves, others and life. The following is an excerpt of her talk.
As the world has evolved, whether it’s in a personal way or it’s in a global way, we have tremendous difficulty with people. Now I did a group in Barre, Massachusetts where the Insight Meditation Society is that I co-founded in 1976. And this guy in that group said to me, “You know my whole life I’ve thought that of course we like everybody, but loving somebody—that’s like an extremely unusual, rare, rare state.” And he said to me, “You’re reversing it. You’re saying we can love everybody, and maybe not like maybe anybody.”
And I thought about it and I said, “You’re right, I am reversing it.” Because of the way I’m using the word love, which is that deep acknowledgement of connection, that our lives are connected — Which has nothing to do with wanting to invite someone to dinner, or seeing them succeed, or giving them money, or saying yes or anything like that. It’s the heart’s knowing that we are part of this great picture of life, and that everybody actually wants to be happy.
Love is that deep acknowledgement of connection…which has nothing to do with wanting to invite someone to dinner, or seeing them succeed, or giving them money.
We all want a sense of belonging. We want a sense of feeling at home, somewhere in this body, in the mind, of one another on this planet somewhere. And it’s because of the force of ignorance or confusion that we make so many mistakes. Look at what we are taught about where the greatest happiness has to be found: endless consumption or acquisition.
One of my favorite phrases to examine these days is, “it’s a dog eat dog world.” Many of us have that kind of conditioning—don’t take care of anybody because they can’t take care of you. And it doesn’t matter who you have to hurt or step on to get ahead, you know you’ll only be safe, you’ll only be happy when you’re on top, and don’t worry about anybody else.
I once semi-ruined this young woman’s life when I was teaching a six-day workshop, and the first night I was talking about that phrase. And this woman came up to the microphone and she said, “What a horrible phrase. I never knew that was the phrase. I always thought the phrase was, It’s a doggy-dog world.” Like puppies in meadows, jumping up and down.
So the six days went by, and it was the closing circle and she came up to the mic again and she said, “I’ve decided, I’m not going to live in a dog eat dog world. I’m going to live in a doggy-dog world.”
We can see for ourselves what’s true by paying attention. Learning how to pay attention differently, more accurately, less laden with all that conditioning overtaking our perception.
So look at what we are taught about where happiness is, where strength is, how alone we are. But what’s true? This actually is one of the greatest blessings of mindfulness, is that we can see for ourselves what’s true by paying attention. Learning how to pay attention differently, more accurately, less laden with all that conditioning overtaking our perception. And we see for ourselves that maybe endless vengefulness is not that happy-making, maybe compassion is not that stupid. And we can see very directly for ourselves, there is a kind of compassion we can have for those who are caught in a dog-eat-dog world.
The post Feeling Lonely? Embrace Compassion appeared first on Mindful.
By Deepak Chopra, MD
When you take the popular phrase “Follow your bliss” and trace it back to its source, something more powerful was intended. In a late interview the famous expert on mythology Joseph Campbell first used the phrase, saying “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you.”
This implication that bliss is a personal path, and that the path is pre-determined, is much more than “do what you really like to do,” which is how most people interpret “Follow your bliss.” Let me expand on this point by showing that “bliss” is much more fundamental than almost anyone realizes. It holds the key to transforming the mind.
Doing what you really like to do is certainly a good idea; it is much better than the opposite, doing what you have to do even if you don’t particularly like it. But no one can engage in pleasurable activity all the time. The human mind brings us experiences of pleasure and pain, and since the two are paired as inescapable opposites, mental tension and conflict are inevitable no matter how positive and pleasant you try to make your life be. (For deeper background, please see my most recent post, “Can You Make Your Mind Your Friend?”)
Campbell deeply understood the cultural and spiritual roots of “Follow your bliss.” He emphasizes the universal quality of bliss in the same interview. “Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.” This gives enormous power to the life you are supposed to be living, and it also points out how to get there.
Bliss in the ancient Indian tradition is Ananda, one of the three primal aspects of creation. “Sat Chit Ananda” is often translated from the Sanskrit as “eternal bliss consciousness,” which is the foundation of existence. What is implied is that existence ,consciousness, and joy belong together without beginning or end. That’s very different from the modern scientific assumption that the mind, especially the human mind, evolved over billions of years from inert, mindless matter.
Campbell knew what Ananda was, and in a simple way he tells us that if you get hold of bliss and follow it, you will arrive at the essential nature of the mind, which is blissful by nature. Therefore, existence itself is blissful by its very nature. Such a declaration, if true, would totally overturn our everyday experience, because it seems obvious that a person’s existence can be filled with problems, obstacles, struggle, conflict, and trauma.
For “Follow your bliss” to be sound advice is workable only if these negative experiences are in some sense unreal, by which I mean that they mask the actual nature of reality. Only the individual can prove the truth or falseness of Ananda, and this is done by following the invisible thread of consciousness to its source. If the restless, discontented mind, tossed between pleasure and pain, has a blissful source, it has to be reachable if it is to do any good.
Let’s say that you want to follow your bliss as far as it can take you. There are essentially three stages on such a path. Stage 1 is the experience of personal joy, which all of us have known at least once in our lives. These moments touch the lives of people who fall in love or who achieve a triumph or who simply find themselves overjoyed for whatever reason. You grab and hold on to Stage 1 bliss as long as you can, but eventually the moment passes.
A change occurs in Stage 2. Instead of possessing an experience of joy, the joy possesses you. By this I mean that it is more impersonal. In Stage 1, bliss is all for me, the ego-personality. In Stage 2, you rise above personality. The Latin roots of the word “ecstasy” mean “to stand outside.” That’s how Stage 2 bliss feels. You go outside your normal boundaries.
Stage 2 feels light and sometimes out-of-body. Religious awe falls into this category, along with wonder before the beauty of Nature, or its immensity. There can be a sense that time has stopped or that your mind has expanded into a new space that is free, open, untroubled, peaceful, and forever calm. But the essential aspect of Stage 2 bliss is that it possesses you, not the other way around.
Stage 3 is the experience of Stage 2 bliss on a permanent basis, so that it becomes the default state of your awareness. Every person’s mind has a default state already, a set of grooved-in reactions, responses, beliefs, and attitudes that make up their personal story. Stage 1 bliss occurs inside this default setting, while Stage 2 takes a brief vacation from it, and then Stage 3 leaves the old default setting behind completely.
At that point, “Follow your bliss” has accomplished what it was meant to accomplish: liberation. There are many terms for this state, such as enlightenment, waking up, Nirvana, Moksha, or the peace that passes understanding. The important thing is the experience, which begins simply enough, by focusing on the bliss you can create in your life, valuing it, and beginning to experience, usually through meditation or Yoga, a settled sense of the quiet, peaceful mind.
The mind’s quiet is actually an open space in which creation begins to vibrate, at first beyond our perception. But over time this vibration is perceived and grows. The vibratory quality of creation is what Ananda adds to the other two terms, Sat Chit, which are the infinite creative potential of pure Being, existence in its original state before any activity has begun.
Only when you are aware of your essential nature in bliss can the complex problems of the mind and all its suffering be solved once and for all. Your mind will become your friend, because you experience bliss even under circumstances that used to bring pain, confusion, and conflict. “Follow your bliss” has a transformative power, which Joseph Campbell understood and wanted to tell us about.
Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential available on iTunes or Spotify www.deepakchopra.com
A Meditation for Resting In Awareness If we are too egotistical and caught up in our very own experience in any minute, we will be unable to change our perspective in this method and will not even think to try. When we are self-preoccupied, there is basically no understanding of entire domain names of fact…
Are you happy with where you are? If not, follow these steps to transform your life! Transform Your Life By Sivarama Swami We all know nothing comes easy in life. Warren Buffet said, “We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” And with so many distractions like the internet, social media, smartphones, fashion, and so on, discipline is usually the last thing on our minds. But self-discipline is the foundation upon which skills, professions, and life-choices are built. Think of where you would be now if you didn’t go through the discipline of driving lessons and learning the rules of the road. Probably six feet under. Similarly, self-discipline is necessary for all other aspects of life, whether it’s education, health, marriage, business, or raising children. The result of all activities depends on how committed we are to be practicing the disciplines that come with that activity. In other words, in any endeavor, the rule of thumb is that as much as you put into it, that much you get out of it. You can’t withdraw money from a bank account you haven’t put money into. But we often face obstacles to discipline like a lack of motivation or just plain procrastination. Here are 4 tips to help you on your path to transform your life – tips you can add to your life right now. 1. Wake up early! Benjamin Franklin said, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise!” As a practicing monk for 50 years, it is my habit to rise before 4 am. Rising early may require adjustments and rescheduling, but the benefits of being more focused and more “ready to go” are extraordinary. 2. Add a spiritual dimension…
Personal mastery is not something you can accomplish overnight. It is not just going beyond what you can do with your skills and talents. Personal mastery is how you understand and direct your life. For an organization to succeed, each person member of the organization has to be part of the organization purpose and make…
